Planetary Gear Set, Explination Options

[devilsden97]

My parents recently bought a 2010 Toyota Prius. And Both my father and I are interested in how the Planetary gear set works, mostly how it allows the Electric motor to run and the gasoline motor to run a different RPMs and drive the wheels at the same time.

Anyone explain?

[Hanyo]

pretty much the prius does not have different gears in its transmission.


It hard to explain how something works with words. And getting a suitable picture doesnt help much. But i will give it a shot.

Just think of a prius planetary gear set as our celica's differential. When you do a burn out, one tires spins only while the other one just moves foward. (one wheel burn out because we dont have LSD differentials)

Now imagine the wheel that spins on the pavement is replace with an electric motor. With the engine running at 5000 rpm the car will not move forward at all because all that power is sent into the electric motor. if you apply some eletricity to the electric motor it will cause some resistance. This will cause the other wheel on the ground to recieve some power and your car will begin to move forward.

So if you put that into perspective, the pruis tranmission is essentail a differential. When you want to accelerate you are applying power to the electric motor and the engine will start seeing a load and the wheels start to turn. When you want to go into charge mode, the engine rpm goes up and you start to spin the electric motor.

anways the pruis actually has 2 electric motors in it and trying to explain that in words is impossible.

Hope that help. Its not exactly how it works, but close enough so you get an idea how the prius tranmission operates.